Operations | Monitoring | ITSM | DevOps | Cloud

Most IT organizations are trying to reduce help desk demand the same way they have for years: by making the help desk itself more efficient. They improve routing, tighten SLAs, expand self-service, and add AI into the support flow. These changes can make the queue move faster, but they do not stop the work from arriving in the first place. The same problems keep finding their way back to IT. Employees lose time to slow devices, unreliable apps, failed updates, access issues, or confusion after a rollout.

CIOs are under pressure from every direction. Budgets remain tight, geopolitical uncertainty is forcing organizations to rethink resilience, and workforce expectations continue to evolve. At the same time, AI is accelerating a broader shift across enterprise IT – changing not only how organizations operate, but also the skills and roles they will increasingly depend on. The question is not whether AI will reshape IT teams, but how quickly organizations can adapt to these new ways of working.

Technology companies are being pushed to deliver faster outcomes while justifying growing investment in AI, SaaS, and digital infrastructure. But productivity does not improve just because new tools are deployed. It improves when employees can use those tools without the constant drag of slow devices, unstable applications, and fixes that do not fully solve the problem. That is the productivity tax of digital friction.